You walk into a restaurant looking for a comfort meal: some Korean Fried Chicken and chilled Soju. You wait a little for someone to walk by to take your order, but instead, you get greeted in a rather robotic voice by someone not more than two feet. You may not like the way it appears or sounds, but it’s time you started adapting to this big disruptive change.
While customers can have mixed reactions to the use of AI in restaurants, the technology in question is sure to bear a lot of perks for restaurant owners by helping them boost productivity of their staff and reduce operational costs.
The latter needs more attention since a cost-cutting approach will directly impact the user experience for customers who like to dine in.
You can say the use of AI by restaurant owners is inevitable due to a shortage of labor, which is evident in South Korea where more than 5000 robot waiters instead of humans are serving customers their food. Until now, we’ve only scratched the surface of the issue and there is a lot more to come as you continue to read.
Is AI Doing Everything Everywhere?
It’s not a scene from a sci-fi movie anymore to be served by an AI robot. But aside from robots, AI comes in handy for restaurant staff and owners in a lot of ways.
How Is Inventory Managed?
AI algorithms have the power to read through the previous sales data and analyze which customers asked for an increase and decrease in what specific ingredient and may repeat the same on their next visit. Keeping customers satisfied on their visit should be every restaurant’s priority. Therefore, with the help of the results, they can reduce the wastage of supplies, manage their inventory better, and avoid the tension of bothering customers with the wrong meal on their table.
Who Is Handling The Kitchen?
You enter the kitchen of a restaurant and you see a completely different picture than what was painted in the movie Terminator(robots taking over humans). It’s actually the other way around. All you see is a little Roomba constantly roaming on the kitchen floor and cleaning up anything in its way.
You also see a robotic arm helping the chefs do mindless and repetitive tasks like chopping veggies, spinning salads, or flipping burger patties. AI or robots are certainly not going to take over the food and drink industry, but they can become helpers for talented chefs behind the scenes. This helps the chefs focus on enhancing the flavors of our food or coming up with new ways to present dishes.
The Kitchen Equipment Is Smart
The bots are doing their job and the kitchen equipment has become smarter.
There is AI integration in all the kitchen appliances like the refrigerator, oven, and other kitchen tools. The AI apps have proven to be a savior everywhere and that’s why more and more restaurants are adopting the style. When you place the dish in the oven, the cooking time automatically sets, along with the temperatures that each dish wants. The centrally connected AI systems then alert you to replace the dish when it’s time to prepare another meal. You will love having his feature at your home too as even if you are forgetful, the AI will tackle the preparation. Since everything is under its reign.
Order From Personalized Menu Recommendations
When you visit your favorite coffee shop AT LEAST 4 times a week, then only will the barista vaguely remember your order and sometimes even miss how much sugar you like. Robots run by algorithms, on the other hand, are trained to adapt themselves and personalize their recommendations based on each customer.
Once you dine in at a restaurant, your meal preference will get saved in their database. Hence, the next time you are craving that very steak or burger, you can place your order through the restaurant’s application, and the AI will suggest you try their related items. You will feel attracted to watching the juicy visuals of the food. And without further wait, you will add to the cart. How cool is that?
Give Your Feedback!
Restaurants love to hear what customers say about their food, service, environment, and ambiance. For that, they have kept a digital way of getting feedback. What is digital feedback? instead of providing physical cards to the diners to pen down their experience with their signature, they have come up with the concept of signature design. All you need to do is take the tablet from the robot. Write your words, and at the end, press this option to design your signature. Click here to see what font type you want, which color, and what size. Leading to your designed signature. Many customers end up visiting multiple times too as they really liked the idea as the signatures remain safe and there is no chance of fake scenes.
Run Marketing Campaigns
The data in the form of feedback and bookings the customers make help the eateries run marketing campaigns. Like, they send birthday emails and special discounts between specific hours as a token of gesture. Besides, they attract customers by attaching drooling visuals of new additions to their menu. The majority of the time, it works, as many times, the images increase their cravings and compel them to come here.
Conclusion
We hope you enjoyed reading how has AI benefitted restaurants in keeping the customer’s first dining experience pure joy, nurturing the relationship with them via personalized emails for birthdays, new promotions, discounts on lunch and dinner at the restaurant and not forgetting the feature of the signature design.
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